History of the collection

Button in course of centuries...

At the very beginning there was probably a thorn and the fish bone followed. The first clothing pin was created.

All this was taking place in prehistory, in the stone age. The oldest mention of this primitive, but in our point of view of a full-fledged button, origins in the older Bronze Age (1800-1700 BC). At this point it can be found along with a needle - brooch. Its use is merely decorative.

We record the first practical use of the buttons in the 12-13th century, along with the spreading change of fashion. The era of rococo became a cult of buttons, that is when the coats and vests had more than 70 buttons.

The first one to use this new element of clothing was nobility, but soldiers were interested as well.

It didn´t take long and this fashion anchored in the Czech lands.

The first pioneer of then tin button was Christian Hiecke of Petrovice (since 1770) in the northern Bohemia. Vienna and Waldes in Prague followed shortly after.

Uniform buttons - the biggest collection in the Czech Republic

The collection, which I am going to write about, was founded in 1974, by now some 40 years ago.

As you are all probably aware of, the year 1974 belonged in our country to the era of normalization, when the life wasn´t easy for the ordinary people, especially the collectors weren´t an exception.

In these times my father collected badges, just like many of his colleagues.

When the badges became an ordinary item, he started thinking about what should he be interested in, in order not to resemble others and to be politically correct. Also the items had to be cheap and there had to be enough of them.

Once he acquired the Czech military button with Roman swords. He collected more of them and found out that each one of them is different.

And the idea was here, he would collect buttons!

But not just the common types, which count milions of types just in Europe, but metal, glass, plastic with embossment. Embossment is a pattern used on uniforms.

Over the course of years the collection started growing and the thematic organization became an imminent need. There were more attempts, but they were not always proven good. The organization of the collection has therefore changed many times.

The system has been finalized in the recent years, and currently there are two basic ways of sorting the buttons:

uniform buttons of armed forces

uniform buttons of civil branches

These are consequently categorized in many other categories for example: army buttons, police buttons, airline buttons, railway and other transport companies buttons, heraldic, company buttons, club buttons etc. In the collection the buttons are further sorted not only according to the "avers" (face side) but also according to the "revers" (back side).

It is usually there, where the producer´s name is stated, for example Waldes a spol., Karel Šulc Prague, PREMO Protivín, A. KASPARIDES Jablonec n/N, M.S.S.A.G. (Matias Salcher in Wagstadt - Bílovec) or Tobias Walted in Vienna.

At the end, they are sorted according to the country of origin.

I shall come back to the buttons with crossed Roman swords of our army once again, to the buttons I mentioned in the beginning, to those, which caused all of this.

After 40 years of collecting, I have more than 200 pieces and each one of them is different...